Tampa Bay Water Blog

Nearly All Environmental Recovery Sites Improved

When Tampa Bay Water was created 20 years ago, there were three significant goals: develop alternative water supplies, reduce groundwater pumping from long-producing facilities, and produce water in an environmentally sustainable manner. All three goals have been met with tremendous success.

Part of the environmental sustainability goal is facilitating the recovery of water resources and environmental systems attributable to reduced groundwater withdrawals from the 11 regional wellfields to a long-term average of 90 million gallons per day. Tampa Bay Water has been evaluating the health of 1,264 lakes and wetlands since 2011, and recently completed a preliminary environmental recovery assessment report that finds:

Approximately 75 percent of the monitored lakes and wetlands in this study meet their recovery metric (as of late 2018).

Approximately 21 percent show significant improvement, but do not yet meet their recovery metric.

Less than 2 percent are significantly below their recovery metric.

The preliminary report was submitted to the Southwest Florida Water Management District in December 2018. Staff will complete its final analysis of each site and submit the full report to the District in the second half of 2020.